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Do You Feel Less Guilty if Screen Time Means Non-Violent Games?

My wife introduced our kids to the Mario Party video games. Our kids, in turn, have informed me that for the next few days I should refer to them as Mario and Princess Peach. Thankfully, they didn’t go so far as to ask me to amend their birth certificates.

These games of make-believe sometimes leave me wondering if we’ve allowed too much screen time in our house. But then I ask myself what I and my brothers were doing when we were about that old. We pretended we were robots because we watched Small Wonder every morning.

More significantly, there was a time not long ago where I was worried my son didn’t have much of an imagination. Playing games of pretend seemed to be foreign to him. Now that’s no longer a problem, so unless he starts struggling in school or socially, I’m happy to see him flex his creative muscles.

The fact that our kids have easier access to video games than any previous generation does lead me to wonder which form of screen time is better. Are video games building our kids’ imagination and problem-solving skills, or are they even worse than TV? The research is mixed but seems to favor video games.